Mexico Border Murders Baffle Prosecutors

Published 8:00 pm, Tuesday, June 24, 2003

Associated Press Writer

Prosecutors said Wednesday they are working on more than a dozen theories to explain a series of murders of young women in the border city of Ciudad Juarez.

Deputy Attorney General Carlos Vega denied his office was focusing solely on the widely questioned explanations that a satanic cult or organ traffickers were behind many of the 108 unexplained murders over the past decade.

He said that among other theories about possible suspects were police, former police and youth gangs.

"We have more than 12, 13 lines of investigation," he added. He said that there had also been a suggestion U.S. soldiers might have been involved, though he provided no indication that investigators have evidence pointing to them.

Officials have been under increasing pressure to solve at least some of the killings and have offered several seemingly implausible theories, often with scant evidence to support them.

Vega spoke during a news conference at which Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha announced a major reorganization of Mexico's Justice Department, including the creation of unit to investigate terrorism and arms trafficking.

Macedo said new units under the prosecutor for organized crime will deal with trafficking in minors and undocumented workers, in terrorism and in robbery of vehicles.

Vega said 258 women have been murdered in Ciudad Juarez over the past decade and 108 cases are considered unsolved. Attention has focused on 93 in which young women were apparently sexually abused, slain and then dumped in the desert outside the city just south of El Paso, Texas.

Since 2001, the federal Justice Department had been assisting state investigators, whose failure to solve the cases had enraged many Mexicans. On April 30, the Justice Department announced it was taking over 14 of the cases.

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So far only one man _ an Egyptian resident of the United States _ has been convicted in the 93 murders. Several other suspects are in custody, though victims' rights groups say they believe the men may be innocent.